Wind Lord Mel'jarak Detailed Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the
encounter with Wind Lord Mel'jarak in Heart of Fear. It is targeted at anyone
who desires to understand the fight mechanics.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.

Wind Lord Mel'jarak is the fourth boss in the Heart of Fear raid instance.
This is an encounter in which your raid will have to deal with a large
variety of adds. Healers, tanks, and DPS will all have to perform excellently
in order to defeat the boss.

Handling and killing the adds plays a central part in the encounter. They have
a number of mechanics associated to them, which will decide your raid strategy.

Adds of the same kind share a health pool and have the same abilities.

Killing 3 adds of the same kind grants Mel'jarak a stack of a buff that
increases his damage done and his damage taken.

Adds can be crowd-controlled:

when 9 adds are alive, you can crowd-control 4 adds;

when 6 adds are alive, you can crowd-control 2 adds;

when 3 adds are alive, you can crowd-control 0 adds.

As we will explain in this guide, the fight can be done in a number
of ways, depending the order in which you kill the adds, which adds you
crowd-control, whether you decide to finish off 2 kinds of adds at the
same time (to reduce the amount of time that you have to fight
non crowd-controlled adds), etc.

3.1. Video by Inner Sanctum

4.1. Mel'jarak

Mel'jarak has a few spells that he will use throughout the fight. In
addition to this, he melees with a relatively high frequency and for a high
amount of damage.

Whirling Blade is an ability that Mel'jarak casts every 60 seconds.
He throws his weapon at the location of a random raid member. Upon reaching
that location, the blade returns to Mel'jarak. The blade deals damage to all
players in it path, both on the way to the location, and on the way back to
Mel'jarak.

Rain of Blades is a raid-wide damaging ability that Mel'jarak casts
every 60 seconds. It deals Physical damage to all raid members every 0.50
seconds, for 6 seconds.

Wind Bomb is an ability that Mel'jarak casts regularly after he
reaches 75% health. He throws a bomb at the location of a raid member, which
deals a high amount of Nature damage to anyone within 5 yards of the location.
3 seconds after landing, the bomb arms itself and explodes if any raid members
come within 6 yards of it, dealing a very high amount of raid-wide Nature
damage. The bombs that Mel'jarak casts do not despawn, and remain present in
the room until the end of the fight, progressively limiting the space that
players have to move around.

In addition to these abilities, each time adds of the same kind are killed,
Mel'jarak gains a stack of Recklessness, which increases his
damage done by 50%, and his damage taken by 33%.

4.2. Adds

As we mentioned earlier, there are 9 adds present in the
room where you fight Mel'jarak. They all engage together, when Mel'jarak is
pulled.

4.2.1. Crowd Control

The key mechanic of the encounter is the ability to crowd-control
these adds. Most crowd-control spells, such as Polymorph or
Freezing Trap, can be used. The encounter also provides you with an easy way to
crowd-control, regardless of your raid composition. Around the edges of the
room, there are 4 weapon racks. Interacting with these racks will grant
players (1 per rack) a special ability called Impaling Spear.

Impaling Spear is a form of crowd control. It effectively stuns the
targeted add for 50 seconds. The stun is broken by direct damage done to the
add, but not by damage that the add takes due to other adds of the same kind
being attacked. The same applies to all other forms of crowd-control, namely
that indirect damage dealt to that mob (through its shared health pool) does
not break the crowd-control.

There is a limit on how many adds you can have crowd-controlled at one
time.

If all adds are alive, you can crowd-control a maximum of
4 adds.

If 6 adds are alive, you can crowd-control a maximum of 2
adds.

If 3 adds are alive, you cannot crowd-control any adds.

If you exceed these limits, Mel'jarak will dispel the crowd-control from all
adds.

Note that crowd-controlling adds at the start of the fight does not pull
the boss, so you have ample time to set-up your assignments.

4.2.2. Sra-thik Amber-Trappers

Amber Prison traps the targeted player and any other players within
2 yards of them, encasing them in amber. Players who are trapped are stunned
and unable to move. Other players can free them simply by interacting with the
amber (right-clicking it). The Amber-Trappers cast Amber Prison roughly every
35 seconds. Players who free others from Amber Prisons are debuffed with
Residue, which prevents them from freeing other players for 115
seconds.

Corrosive Resin is a debuff that the Amber-Trappers place on a random
raid member. This debuff has 5 stacks, and deals a moderate amount of Nature
damage to that player, every second, for each stack present. When the affected
player moves, the stacks are progressively consumed, and each stack that is
consumed leaves behind a void zone, called Corrosive Resin Pool. Corrosive
Resin is cast every 35 seconds.

5.1. Crowd-Controlling the Adds

By far the most important decision you will have to make is which of the
adds you will crowd control. We will begin by saying that the fight is
killable with more or less any combination of adds you choose to crowd-control.
It is ultimately up to you to decide which combination works best for your
raid group, based on your strengths and weaknesses.

In order to make an informed choice, we will quickly go over the problems
that each type of adds presents for your raid, but we will refrain from
suggesting crowd-controlling combinations. If one combination proves to be
very easy to handle, we will write about it.

5.1.1. Amber-Trappers

Sra-thik Amber-Trappers will regularly encase players in
Amber Prisons. While this deals no damage, it is a great inconvenience.
This spell is cast every 35 seconds, so if all 3 adds are left free for a long
time, the Residue debuff will eventually overwhelm your raid, and you
will be unable to free all the trapped players.

The void zones left behind due to the Corrosive Resin debuff are not
problematic in and of themselves, but they will limit your raid's movement
space, and can cause problems after a while.

Overall, this is the least problematic type of adds, and the one that you
can leave up and relatively unattended for the longest time.

5.1.2. Battle-Menders

Zar'thik Battle-Menders, if left unchecked, will heal the other mobs for
very high amounts, as well as buffing their damage greatly. The heals can
be interrupted, and the damage buff can be dispelled, but it will require the
concentration of your raid for as long as these adds are alive and not
crowd-controlled.

Failing to interrupt their heals is quite a set-back, as they heal all 3 adds
of a random kind for 25% of their maximum health.

Since tank damage is quite intense in this encounter, the
Quickening buff can quickly lead to a burst of damage that can kill a
tank.

While these adds can theoretically be negated almost entirely
through interrupts and dispels, in practice this will prove quite difficult for
any sustained period of time. We recommend always crowd-controlling at least
one of these adds.

In 10-man, a single reliable interrupter is sufficient to prevent a
Battle-Mender from successfully casting any heals.

5.1.3. Elite Blademasters

Kor'thic Elite Blademasters, if left unchecked, will deal extreme amounts
of damage to random players. By casting their Kor'thik Strike ability
in unison on the same target, the 3 Blademasters can easily one-shot
players.

It is not possible to tell who will be hit by Kor'thik Strike, as they do
not change target from the tank, nor do they announce their victim.

While it is possible to overcome this through having everyone topped off
whenever a Kor'thik Strike is about to happen, as well as covering it with
a raid cooldown such as Rallying Cry, leaving all 3 of these mobs free is
not exactly feasible. Given the rather long interval between the casts of
Kor'thik Strike, it may be possible to simply burn these adds down with DPS
cooldowns.

We recommend always having at least one Blademaster crowd-controlled.

5.1.4. General Advice

As we mentioned earlier, it would not serve much purpose for us to tell
you which adds to crowd-control when. There are a few things that may prove
helpful, however.

If your raid has many classes that can interrupt and dispel reliably, you
are better off not crowd-controlling all the Battle-Menders, and letting them
live for longer, instead. In this case, you should take advantage of your
situation and kill the Blademasters first.

If your raid is able to survive the damage from all three Blademasters
(either through good use of cooldowns, or because the damage of these abilities
ends up not one-shotting players on live servers), you should take advantage of
the situation and crowd-control other mobs instead.

5.1.5. Viable 10-man Crowd-Control Strategy

While there are many crowd-control strategies that work, we can attest to
the following one being relatively easy to pull off.

Crowd-control 1 Amber-Trapper, 2 Battle-Menders, and 1 Blademaster.

Kill the Battle-Mender first. Tank all the mobs together for additional
AoE damage from cleaves.

When the Battle-Menders are dead, crowd-control 1 Amber-Trapper and 1
Blademaster.

Kill the Blademasters.

Kill the Amber-Trappers.

5.2. Target DPS Priority

First of all, DPSing Mel'jarak is not a priority until the adds have been
killed. Of course, any damage that you are able to deal to him through cleaving
or DoTs is welcome, and will make the fight easier, especially if the enrage
timer proves to be strict.

Secondly, it is important to note that when adds are killed, the
remaining adds are not healed. This means that it is possible to bring all
adds of two kinds (or even 3) to low health before finally killing them. This
is something we strongly recommend, as it makes it much easier to control the
mobs, especially the Blademasters (because you keep the ability to crowd-control
4 adds).

It is possible, however, that the complications resulting from keeping all
adds alive for a long time may overwhelm your raid. In this case, you can
focus down one type of adds.

Since the enrage timer of the encounter is somewhat strict, you should try
to do as much as damage to Mel'jarak while killing the adds as possible. This
mostly means keeping up DoTs on him, spreading diseases, and so on.

5.3. Tanking the Mobs

Mel'jarak will be active for the entire duration of the fight. Even though
his abilities are not at the forefront, they will still have to be dealt with.
As we mentioned before, Mel'jarak also melees for a large amount of damage,
something that is increased each time adds are killed.

10-man raids will want to use two tanks for this fight, but it is possible
to one-tank the fight with a properly geared tank. In this case, this tank
will benefit from a very large amount of Attack Power from Vengeance,
greatly boosting their DPS and self-healing. If using two tanks, one tank will
have to pick up Mel'jarak, and one or two of the remaining 5
non-crowd-controlled adds. The other tank will have to tank the rest of the
adds.

25-man raids have the option of using three tanks. This makes the tank
healing considerably easier. One tank should take Mel'jarak and one add, while
the remaining adds should be split between the other two tanks.

All the adds that are not crowd-controlled should be tanked in the same
place, together with the boss. This allows for easy cleaving and AoE damage,
which will help lower the health of multiple types of adds simultaneously.

5.4. Positioning

There is no point in the fight when your raid can safely stack together.
The ideal positioning is to be spread out in a wide circle around the boss.
Melee DPS are unable to spread out too much, but they should still be able
to stand at least 2 yards apart from one another so that
Amber Prison does not affect more than one player (assuming it can even be
cast on melee players).

As an exception to this, your raid may find it necessary to stack up during
Rain of Blades to make healing possible, especially after all the adds
have been killed and Mel'jarak's damage is increased. In this case, be
extremely wary of the fact that Mel'jarak will often cast Whirling Blade
immediately before or after Rain of Blades, so everyone must move in to stack
at the last possible moment, and must be very quick to move out again once
Rain of Blades is over.

It is important that players do not line up in relation to Mel'jarak's
position, because Whirling Blade damages all players in the path of the
target.

Players will have to also move out of the void zones left behind by the
players affected by Corrosive Resin.

Finally, certain areas will become inaccessible, as they will be taken up by
Mel'jarak's Wind Bombs. While Wind Bombs do not normally target melee
players, if everyone is stacking together to help healing during Rain of
Blades, the boss will cast a Wind Bomb in melee range, so everyone must be
very quick to move away.

5.5. Dealing with Add Abilities

5.5.1. Amber-Trappers

Whenever a player is trapped by an Amber Prison, someone should free
them. There is no need for assignments, as whoever is nearest to the trapped
player can perform the task.

Players should, however, communicate when they are unable to release others
due to the Residue debuff. Ideally, everyone should have a way of
displaying players' Residue debuff on their raid frames, so that they know
automatically when they need to free someone. Otherwise, if the players who are
next to the trapped player have Residue, they should call out for someone else
to free that player.

Players who are affected by the Corrosive Resin should move immediately
in order to get rid of the stacks of the debuff. They should be careful where
they run to, however, so that they do not fill the central area of the room
with the void zones. Ideally, they should run straight to one of the edges
of the room, and then run along the edge.

5.5.2. Battle-Menders

Any Battle-Menders who are not crowd-controlled must be interrupted any time
they cast Mending. Indeed, if even a single cast goes through, it will
severely set back your raid.

Whenever they cast Quickening, it should be dispelled from all the
targets. Mass Dispel is excellent for this, but other, single-target
dispels can also be used.

5.5.3. Elite Blademasters

The Elite Blademasters are the least complicated adds to deal with. For the
most part, they will simply melee the tank. As we have seen, dealing with the
Kor'thik Strike can be very difficult if all Blademasters are free, but it
is otherwise simply an inconvenience, and something that the healers can just
heal through.

Due to the fact that the damage dealt by Kor'thik Strike is Physical, even
the highest theoretical hit (with 3 free Blademasters) of 450,000 is probably
survivable by a random topped-off raid member, due to the damage reduction
provided by their armor. If at least one Blademaster is always
crowd-controlled, then this becomes much easier to manage.

5.6. Healing Concerns

As should be obvious by now, there are many different sources of damage
in this encounter. The fight is quite strenuous on the healers overall.

The sources of damage are:

generally high tank damage, and increasing damage on Mel'jarak's tank, as
the fight goes on (with 3 stacks of Recklessness, healers can
expect hits of up to 170,000 on the tank);

The best timing for Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp will depend
on what the most problematic moment of the encounter is for your raid.

For example, if you are trying to burn the Blademasters down before they
are able to cast (another) Kor'thik Strike, then you should use
Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp then. Likewise if you are trying to quickly down
another type of adds.

From a raid DPS perspective, the best time to use the cooldown is when all
adds have been killed. This is because the boss is taking greatly
increased damage at this time, and your raid will have fewer distractions since
the adds will not be there to cast their abilities. This may prove to be a
near-mandatory strategy, depending on your raid's DPS, as the boss' enrage
timer is quite strict.

The Mel'jarak encounter is a difficult one, and each different stage of the
fight will have challenges for your raid.

The first obstacle you will have to overcome is the initial chaos that
occurs at the start of the fight. At this point, you will have to handle the
boss (and all his abilities except for Wind Bomb) and 5 adds. You should
not hesitate to make use of healing and defensive cooldowns at this stage,
in order to survive longer and be able to practice this stage better.

We also do not recommend bringing Mel'jarak below 75% health until a first
type of adds has been killed, so that you do not have the added challenge of
Wind Bombs.

After the first 3 adds are dead, you will have to deal with one fewer type of
adds. Since Mel'jarak will
be taking 33% increased damage, you can use DoTs and cleaving to bring him to
75% at this point, and begin practicing how to best handle the Wind Bombs.

The amount of abilities and mobs that you will have to deal with up to this
point is high, and this will undoubtedly cause problems for your raid at first.
All you can do is try repeatedly, prioritising staying alive over killing the
adds, so that everyone gets as much time as possible to get used to the
abilities.

When 6 adds have been killed, you will have to deal with the
last 3 adds without any crowd-control. Depending on the adds that you
chose, this could prove to be an extremely stressful time (even more so since
Mel'jarak's damage is greatly increased by this point). Most cooldowns should
be available once again, and you can use them at this point.

Even though it is likely that this boss will have a rather strict enrage
timer, you should focus first on finishing the fight with everyone alive, and
actually reaching the enrage timer. Once you are able to do this more or less
reliably, then you can start looking at ways to optimise your DPS (by DoTting
and cleaving Mel'jarak, etc.).

The Heroic mode of the Mel'jarak encounter is quite similar to the Normal
mode, although it presents a few interesting changes. Compared to the other
Heroic modes in the Heart of Fear raid, this is one of the more accessible
ones.

8.1. Differences from Normal Mode

Wind Lord Mel'jarak has considerably more health than in Normal mode, and
both him and his adds deal more damage. In addition to this, there are a few
other changes.

A maximum of 3 adds may be crowd-controlled at one time before Mel'jarak
dispels all of the adds, down from 4 in Normal mode.

The adds now respawn. 45 seconds after a group of adds is killed, a new
group (identical to the first one) will enter the fight.

The Recklessness debuff that Mel'jarak gains when a group of
adds dies is changed. The buff is no longer permanent, and it no longer
stacks. Instead, it lasts for 30 seconds, and it increases the damage that
Mel'jarak takes by 600% (up from 33%). The increase in damage dealt by
Mel'jarak remains unchanged (50%).

8.2. Strategy

You will choose 3 adds to keep crowd-controlled for the entire duration of
the fight (we recommend keeping all three Sra-thik Amber-Trappers
crowd-controlled). You will then be left with the remaining two groups of adds,
and the boss. Given the huge health pool of the boss, and the equally huge
increase in damage taken when a group of adds is killed, you should pretty much
ignore Mel'jarak at this point, and focus on killing one of the two groups of
adds. When the adds die, you should switch to Mel'jarak and burn him hard,
using DPS cooldowns, for the 30 seconds during which he takes increased
damage. When his debuff expires, you should switch to the remaining group of
adds, and DPS it. Remember that 45 seconds after the first group of adds is
killed, it will essentially respawn (3 identical adds will join the fight).

From here on out you will simply employ a rotation of killing the
lowest-health group of adds, then switching to Mel'jarak while he is taking
increased damage, then DPSing the next group of adds and so on.

There are several other specific concerns that you will encounter while
performing this strategy, and we talk a bit about them below.

8.2.1. Dealing with Wind Bomb

Note that, since you are DPSing Mel'jarak while there are adds alive,
he will begin casting Wind Bomb while there are adds active. This should
not be a problem, unless you have Sra-thik Amber-Trappers that are not
crowd-controlled. This can cause players to be trapped in amber while inside a
Wind Bomb, which basically ensures a wipe (no one can go in to free them
without triggering the bomb, and they will trigger the bomb themselves
eventually).

Since we strongly advise crowd-controlling the Amber-Trappers, dealing with
Wind Bombs will simply be a choice of individual awareness and
positioning.

8.2.2. Dealing with Battle-Menders

Since you are leaving the Zar'thik Battle-Menders free, you will need to
have several dedicated interrupters (3 in 10-man and 6 in 25-man). There
should be no need for back-up interrupters, since no designated interrupters
are at risk of being trapped in amber.

Additionally, of course, you will have to dispel Quickening as you
usually would.

8.2.3. Dealing with Blademasters

You will have to contend with the coordinated attacks of all three
Blademasters (we are, of course, referring to their Kor'thik Strike
ability). Given that the damage done by this is Physical (and, therefore,
reduced by armor), no topped-off player will get one-shot by it. However, if
said raid member has recently taken damage from Rain of Blades or
Whirling Blade, the Kor'thik Strike can easily kill them. This will
require the healers to be very prompt in topping off players whenever a
Kor'thik strike is coming up.

8.2.4. Timing DPS Cooldowns

Even though killing each set of adds quickly is always beneficial, everyone
should save their DPS cooldowns for when a group of adds has just been killed,
because these cooldowns are much more efficient when Mel'jarak is taking
increased damage.

Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp should be cast during one of
the periods when Mel'jarak is taking increased damage. The 8-minute enrage
timer of the fight should generally not be a problem, provided that your raid
is executing the strategy correctly.

As you can probably tell, this is straightforward, but it will make the
encounter considerably harder. It means that, until the first pack of adds is
killed, you only crowd-control 2 adds, instead of 4. We advise
crowd-controlling 1 Zar'thik Battle-Mender and
1 Kor'thic Elite Blademaster, and using all DPS cooldowns to
kill the Zar'thik Battle-Menders, while interrupting them.

Once the Menders are dead, you can choose to kill either the Blademasters
or the Amber Trappers next, depending on what is easier for your raid, and
how you execute your regular kills, although we advise killing the
Blademasters.

This concludes our raid guide for Wind Lord Mel'jarak. We hope you have
found our guide helpful, and we remind you that we always award great
consideration to your feedback, both on our forums or by e-mail.